


Family Secrets

by Grayswandir (gothic_gray)



Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27166880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothic_gray/pseuds/Grayswandir
Summary: A little glimpse of the Tookish side of Bilbo's family tree.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins & Gandalf | Mithrandir
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Family Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarSpray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarSpray/gifts).



It was a night in midsummer, and by the fireside in his cozy hobbit-hole, Bilbo Baggins was sharing a glass of after-supper wine with a very late but very welcome visitor. His neighbors, if any of them were awake to see the light still glowing warmly at his round windows, must have wondered what new mischief he was about, for the hour was certainly well past bed-time for any respectable hobbit. But Bilbo Baggins was not quite a respectable hobbit — not since his sudden, unexpected disappearance into the Wild, and even less so since his no-less-unexpected return — and these days, it never bothered him to keep odd hours, especially if he was receiving guests from afar. 

In particular, nothing pleased him more than to welcome back the old friend who was sharing his hearthside tonight: Gandalf the wizard, returned but lately from the now bustling town of Dale. From his talk, it appeared that Gandalf had spent some time, too, traveling in the south of Mirkwood, where he always seemed to have some urgent business, the nature of which he would never quite explain, no matter how Bilbo pressed him. There could be little doubt that it had something to do with the shadow that had lain for so many years over that land — and with some evil more sinister even than dragons, Bilbo guessed. But whenever Gandalf was in Hobbiton he was merry, and preferred not to speak of dark places. 

Tonight his conversation was all about the rebuilding of Dale. He had brought Bilbo a present from one of the markets: a small but finely-wrought silver trinket of Dwarf-make, set all around with tiny gems in many colors. That Bilbo had no need of more treasures, or mathoms, Gandalf knew very well; but even without having the slightest notion of its use, Bilbo was delighted to hold solidly in his hands such a token of the renewed splendor of Dale and the Lonely Mountain. 

“I say, Gandalf,” he said after admiring it for a while. “This puts me in mind of something I’ve been wanting to show you. If you’ll just pardon me a moment, I’ll go and get it.”

The wizard motioned with his pipe that Bilbo was quite free to take his time. He sat before the fire with his wine and blew slow smoke rings up toward the mantelpiece, where the familiar Elvish blade hung on the wall. After a while, Bilbo came back, bearing a lidless box in which shone something silver and bejeweled. He brought the box into the light. Inside it was a brooch, rather large, in a setting of slightly-tarnished silver with edges curling out like tongues of fire. It had a great round azure stone in the center, surrounded by sparkling white crystals. Sitting forward in his chair, Gandalf extended his hand, and Bilbo took the brooch from the box and gave it to him.

“How did you come by this?” said Gandalf.

“It was my uncle Hildigrim’s. He passed on last year, you know, while I was away — a hundred and one years old he was — and he left it to me specially in his will, _if I should return_. That’s what it said. Seeing as I was presumed dead myself, most of what he left to me was distributed among the rest of the family, and I never bothered to make a fuss about it. But the other day his son, my cousin Adalgrim, came round and brought me this, and told me I was to have it.” 

“Did he now,” murmured Gandalf, turning the piece over with interest and looking it over.

“Funny thing is, he couldn’t give me any reason why it was left to me, or tell me where it came from. To tell the truth, I don’t think he knew. The way he talked, I got a sense that at first he planned to keep it for himself, reasoning that I’d missed my chance at inheritances by being away where I shouldn’t be, you know. But then thinking how it had been willed to me so particularly gave him a queer feeling about it, and he finally made up his mind to bring it around. Now, I don’t pretend to be an expert,” said Bilbo, in the tones of someone who is pretty sure he is at least a bit of an expert, “but it looks to me like something made by Dwarves.”

“That it is,” said Gandalf. “In the halls of Erebor, two hundred years and more ago, I dare say.”

“Wherever could old Uncle Hildigrim have got it from, do you think?”

Gandalf puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. After a while, he passed the brooch back to Bilbo and said, “There is a story behind it, as I think you have already guessed. Indeed, a story it is high time for you to hear.”

“Then let us have it!” said Bilbo. “But first, I’ll just run and fetch another bottle and a cake or two.” He had learned that Gandalf’s stories could sometimes go on and on, and it was always good to have a bit of something on hand to tide one over. 

When the wine and cakes and a tray of crackers had been brought, Bilbo stirred the fire and settled down into his chair. He waited for Gandalf to begin.

“When you were a young hobbit, as I’m sure you remember, every year at the Old Took’s parties on Midsummer-eve, there were stories told of the world outside the Shire. You and some of your younger cousins used to gather around for tales about goblins, elves, fairies, dwarves, dragons, and all the like.” 

“Of course I remember!” said Bilbo. “And the fireworks!”

“You, Bilbo Baggins,” Gandalf added, “used to badger me in particular for stories about your more adventuresome relatives — your uncle Isengar, who marched with a party of Elves to see the sea, and Hildifons, who left the Shire the year he came of age, and never returned.”

Gandalf blew a few smoke rings and then continued: “But there was another of the Old Took’s children whose adventures were less well-known. Indeed, they were hardly known at all, save by a privileged few, among whom I count myself one.”

“Not Hildigrim!” exclaimed Bilbo with disbelief. “Why, of all the Tooks in the Shire I should have thought him the least adventuresome. By all accounts, it was an afternoon’s work just to talk him into a stroll through a neighbor’s garden! Don’t tell me old Uncle Hildigrim ever went roaming out beyond the Shire?”

“As a matter of fact, your uncle was not so very unlike you, in his youth. He loved maps, as you do, and marvelous tales, and old songs. I dare say he loved them no less than some of his bolder relatives who did go roaming, for he loved them for themselves, and not for the part he hoped to play in them. But you are right: Hildigrim Took never did leave the Shire.”

Gandalf pointed with the end of his pipe to the box that sat on the small table between Bilbo and himself. “That brooch was given to him by one who did: his sister, Belladonna.”

At the mention of his mother’s name, Bilbo sat up in his chair. Almost at once, though, he felt a bit foolish for being so surprised. His mother had been a respectable hobbit who kept a good house, of course; but for all that, she was every bit a Took, as everyone had always said, and it was she who had fostered Bilbo’s own love of languages, poetry, and stories.

When he was only a small hobbit-boy, she had used to tell him tales about trolls, and goblins, and wolves — none of which he had ever believed he would encounter in the Wild himself, if indeed they were real creatures at all. As far as Bilbo had known, the tales she told were just that: tales, passed down through books for generations. She had never mentioned anything about any travels of her own.

“Well! I suppose I do understand her keeping that sort of thing a secret,” muttered Bilbo, steadying himself with a helping of crackers and cheese from the tray he had brought in. “But all the same I wish I had known!”

“There are many stories that could be told,” said Gandalf, “but tonight, I will tell you the story of this brooch. It is not long.”

\+ + +

Even in childhood, as Gandalf well remembered, Belladonna Took had always been a hobbit full of lively curiosity. Her elder brother Hildigrim had taken to reading his storybooks aloud to her in the family gardens, while she acted them out in play, slashing at imaginary goblins with a tree branch, or balancing along the imaginary cliff-edge of the garden wall. But books and stories were never enough for her, and like several of her brothers, she eventually set off to see some of the greater world for herself. She was the only one of the Took children, in fact, who went out and left the Shire all on her own, without any traveling party or companions for company, or even Gandalf’s guidance to direct her way. In her tweens, she traveled frequently to Bree-land, and sometimes beyond, for reasons that more reasonable hobbits would have called “no reason at all.” 

It was probable that even Gandalf had never heard the half of her stories. She hoarded them up like treasures for herself, and when she did bring them out to display, it was usually under a pretense of unfamiliarity. She would pretend to have heard them somewhere, in the words of a song or an old book, or as hearsay from a traveler. Even her own brothers and sisters often heard her adventures told as if at second- or third-hand. But Gandalf noticed that the details were too vivid and too precise to be mere fairy-tale recountings or circulating rumors. When she mimicked the sounds of wolves, or when she illustrated the art by which some hero had stealthily pickpocketed a band of trolls, her powers of imitation were uncanny. He believed she had likely been into the Old Forest and up and down the Greenway, perhaps as far north even as Fornost Erain, whose ruins she could describe with a suspicious measure of accuracy. 

The adventure by which she acquired the silver brooch was comparatively domestic: it took place in the town of Bree, at an inn that she was in the habit of frequenting. There, on a winter’s night, she met a young hobbit lad who said he had been robbed of a stash of fine jewels, which he had purchased from a Dwarf trader newly arrived from the East. This hobbit lad suspected that the thieves were a certain troop of Men whom he had noticed watching him on the night of the trade, but he had no evidence against them, and as they were stout-looking, unfriendly, and armed, he could find no one willing to confront them, and was afraid of being hacked to pieces if he accused them openly of theft. Belladonna asked him to point them out to her, and to describe the goods that had gone missing, and promised to do what she could. That night, she followed the Men back to their rooms, waited until they were asleep, and crept in through a window, where she rifled so silently though all their things that not one of them woke — not even when she finally found the jewels hidden beneath one of the pillows on which they were sleeping. When she brought the sack of treasures back to the hobbit lad who had lost them, he was so grateful that he offered to let her choose whatever she liked from among them, to keep for herself. The silver brooch was what she chose.

When she asked the young hobbit why he had come to Bree to purchase such valuable things from such distant lands, he explained that they were gifts for the hobbit lass he hoped to marry, who had never paid much mind to him, he said. She was a fey sort of girl whose head was turned by wild and mysterious things, and he hoped that by dressing up his marriage proposal with imported gifts, he would have a better chance to win her heart.

This story, although it did not feature any goblins, dragons, or princes, touched Belladonna unexpectedly, for it reminded her of a hobbit lad back in the Shire who had been trying, not very successfully, to woo her for several years. This lad of course was Bungo Baggins, and he was a good and kind and honest as well as a respectable and settled hobbit, whose only shortcoming, in Belladonna’s mind, was that there was nothing in the least adventurous about his nature at all. She had never told him of her own travels beyond the Shire, and did not mean to. But she began to think that she might like to try a new kind of adventure — that of furnishing a fine snug hobbit-hole where she could raise a family, and continue in her heart to treasure her youthful memories for many years.

To allay suspicions (not that Bungo Baggins was ever the suspicious type, but Belladonna was always careful), she gave the brooch to her brother Hildigrim, who loved her tales more than anyone, but had never worked up the courage to set foot outside the Shire himself. She married soon after that, and as far as Gandalf knew, he himself was the only one besides her brother to have ever heard the story of her last adventure. 

\+ + +

“Well!” said Bilbo, when the tale had been told. “I suppose it’s no wonder old Uncle Hildigrim wanted to leave this brooch to me. _If I should return_ , indeed!” After a little reflection, he went on, “It’s a pity I can’t thank him for it. It seems he would have been the very best audience to hear of my adventures — and maybe the only one in Hobbiton to believe them!”

“Yes, he would no doubt have enjoyed your story,” Gandalf said. “But I think time will tell that there are more of the Tookish kind of hobbits than you know. Hobbits, as I have always said, are ever full of surprises.”

The two smoked in silence for a time, and Bilbo stirred the fire a bit more, as it was now burning down, and the room was growing dark. He suddenly laughed.

“Well, Gandalf,” he said, “there is one strange thing I finally understand.”

“And what is that?” asked the wizard.

“I understand,” said Bilbo, “why you were so very sure that I had it in me to be an expert burglar.”

Gandalf laughed as well. He sent his colored smoke rings up into the shadows, as strange and wondrous, and at least as numerous, as all the stories and secrets that still remained to be told.


End file.
